Jimson Harvest

Jimson Harvest is dedicated to encouraging and furthering the appreciation and public awareness of Jamestown, the first permanent and enduring English settlement in America. Our aim is to help understand our past to better know ourselves. Our mission is to inform, stimulate and encourage our readers and others to share and learn more about Jamestown’s place in America's history and its legacies.

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Bill Kelso
has been the singular inspirational driving force behind Jamestown Rediscovery,
the renowned archaeological dig that has restored Jamestown to historical
prominence.

We have a unique opportunity to aid in creating a tribute to his
accomplishments and enhancing his legacy with the production of a new
documentary film that will focus on his persona, dedication, motivation and
humanity. It will be made by acclaimed filmmaker Dale Schierholt.

To launch its production, we are soliciting individuals and others to
contribute critical seed funding of $12,000 to Jamestown RediscoveryFoundation, the film’s fiscal
agent.
Your contribution would be essential.

According to Dr. James Horn, President of the Foundation, “This is
a most exciting project and has our full support. Bill Kelso is
one of the foremost US archaeologists of his generation and it is fitting that
your work will bring his remarkable story to a broad audience.”

Filmmaker
Dale Schierholt is known for his intimate, conversational portraits of
compelling personalities, many of them renowned visual artists. This Kelso film
expands the filmmaker’s work and presents him with an opportunity to tell the
story of a highly creative individual whose work is not rooted in the visual
arts. As with all Schierholt's films, the primary criteria for selecting a
subject is the compelling persona of an individual and their work.

This film being made for historical record and
educational purposes. It will be exhibited
at Historic Jamestown and offered by DVD release; we also will seek its showing
on public television. It will also be made available to Jamestowne
Society companies, other lineage societies and similar organizations.

We welcome donations of any amount and hope that all donors will encourage like-minded friends and associates to similarly contribute. Donors of $500 or more to this initial stage funding will be recognized as Founding Funders and will receive the following:

A
special listing in the film’s credits signifying their involvement as a Founding Funder.

A
monthly email from the director updating them on the film’s progress and
upcoming milestones, throughout the film’s production.

An
advanced online screening of the short teaser film before it is released to the
public as well as a digital download of the short.

Invitation
to the premier screening of the film, where they will be recognized.

DVD
of the film after it is released.

Time
is of the essence to enable production to begin late this summer and help
assure completion by next spring. Filming must take place after the dig season
winds down and finish during the winter, before it again resumes.

This
is a once in a lifetime opportunity for individuals
and others that support the aims and objectives of the Jamestown Rediscovery
Project and supporters that wish to further and help burnish Bill Kelso’s
legacy.

Please make checks
payable to The Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation; please note “Kelso
Film” on the check memo and send to:

Jamestown Rediscovery

Historic Jamestowne

1365 Colonial Parkway

Jamestowne, VA
23081

For more information about the
film’s director, go to www.daleschierholt.com;
daleschierholt@gmail.com or phone 609-462-8827;

To get a prospectus with more
details and for more information about the production schedule
and details and benefits of becoming a supporter, contact the producer: Jim McCall at jhmccall1@gmail.com or

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Our “peculiar institution” of slavery did not initially exist at
Jamestown. The first recorded group
of “20.and Odd” Africans is known to have been landed in Virginia in late
August 1619 in what was to the settlers an unknown state of bondage. Those
Africans joined a number who were already there, which would gradually increase
from between thirty and fifty to the low hundreds during the colony’s first
four decades, while the English influx grew by tens of thousands.[1]

Those that came in 1619 may have come as slaves, but were not after
they landed. They are thought to have
been initially bound to agricultural labor and service under terms similar to
English servants’ contracts or indentures, as “no such condition of lifetime
servitude was recognized in English or Virginia law at that time.”[2]
When they completed the terms of indenture as servants, several achieved their
freedom and the capacity to acquire land and property of their own, but others
found themselves bound by what proved to be indefinite terms.

The earliest Jamestown settlers were joined over the following decades
by over a hundred thousand more who were lured from an economically distressed
and overpopulated England by demand for cheap labor and opportunity. As
historian James Horn relates, “…about three-quarters of all English settlers
arrived in Virginia as indentured servants…[who] (not enslaved Africans) would
comprise the main source of labor in the tobacco fields during the entire
century"[3] and
presaged those who subsequently were brought involuntarily. Many of those so
indentured were treated little better than slaves, but some of those that
survived and satisfied their contracts went on to play important roles in the
colony and local economy.

Virginia’s tobacco labor force was predominately composed of English
indentured servants until the 1670s, when that immigration flow slowed to a
trickle and increasing numbers of laborers were needed to work the colony’s
tobacco fields. Historian Martha W. McCartney wrote, “It is estimated that
75,000 whites emigrated from the British Isles to the Chesapeake colonies
between 1630 and 1680, when tobacco consumption was on the rise.
Half-to-three-quarters of these people were indentured servants, many of who
were poor, unskilled youths. Planters were especially eager to procure male
workers to work in their tobacco fields and during the 1630s six times as many
men as women became indentured servants”. However, she also tells us that for
several decades onward, “…approximately four out of five newly arrived
immigrants still perished”.[4]

Involuntary
African immigrants and slavery began being introduced in the 1650s following
the leads of the Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies. In the 1640s, the
Virginia Assembly began enacting policies and laws that fated almost all
Africans and African Americans in the colony to a permanent underclass and
involuntary servitude. In 1661, with the imposition of new royal rule and
aristocratic domination, the nascent Commonwealth began institutionalizing racially
based slavery. Charles II’s imperial initiative fostering the slave trade would
also result in more bonded Africans being deployed by plantations that had
depended on indentured English.

The emergence
of the new elite ruling class during William Berkeley’s second governorship
also established an attitude among its members toward the lower classes,
particularly Africans and African-Americans, that reflected much less humanity
and tolerance, and a facility to arbitrarily relegate them to the lowest
positions in society.

[1] James H. Sweet notes in his
essay, African Identity and Slave
Resistance in the Portuguese Atlantic that, “William Thorndale has
demonstrated that, in the 1619 census, thirty-two Afro-Virginians were already
in the colony”, in Mancall (ed.), The
Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624. 225. They were in addition the
group that more famously arrived that year. Anthony Parent, in Atlantic Outpost in, Heinemann, et al.,
Old Dominion,
New Commonwealth, says that Governor
Berkeley “reported that there were but 300 blacks in 1649, many of whom were
free.” 29

[2] Excerpt from Parent’sAtlantic
Outpost in Old
Dominion, New Commonwealth, 37

[3] Excerpt from James P. P. Horn’s Leaving England: The Social Background of Indentured Servants in the
Seventeenth Century; (Jamestown Interpretive
Essays, Virtual Jamestown, Virginia
Center for Digital History, University of Virginia at http://www.virtualjamestown.org/essays/horn_essay.html)

[4] Excerpts from Martha
McCartney’s, A Study of the Africans and
African Americans on Jamestown Island and at Green Spring, 1619-1803 (Williamsburg, Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation – prepared for the Colonial National Historical Park, National Park
Service U.S. Department of the Interior Cooperative Agreement CA-4000-2-1017;
2003)32.

Other Sources:

Horn, James P. P: Adapting to a New World: English Society in the
Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake. (Chapel Hill and London, published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture,
Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1995)

Swingen,
Abigail L.; Competing Visions of Empire; Labor, Slavery
and the Origins of the British Empire (New Haven CT, Yale
University Press, 2015).

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

With Jamestown Rediscovery, Archaeologist Bill Kelso is creating an extraordinary legacy to help us understand our earliest American origins. He first turned his spade at Historic Jamestowne about twenty-two years ago and found evidence of James Fort, where Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, was established in 1607. This led him and his teams to many other important finds, including the remains of the first Protestant church in America (where Pocahontas and John Rolfe were wed in 1614) and the chancel graves of four of the settlement’s founders (including two that arrived in 1607.)

These discoveries have received international acclaim and recognition and were made with the cooperation of organizations such as the Smithsonian Institution, Preservation Virginia and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; all under Kelso’s leadership and direction.

Now, director Dale Schierholt, in cooperation with Jamestown Rediscovery, is preparing to make a documentary film focused on Dr. Kelso to foster the public’s personal acquaintance with him and to help contribute to his legacy.

The working title is Bill Kelso: The Art of the Dig. Schierholt will profile him using his style of making a conversational portrait, much as he has done with many recognized artists from coast to coast. Schierholt films his subjects at work and sits with them to talk about their work and lives. Working one on one without a crew, Schierholt builds a rapport with his subjects, engaging in the intimate and candid discussions that have become a hallmark of his work. Schierholt creates a unique level of intimacy in his films, which give viewers the atmosphere of a personal visit, offering an exclusive insight into the subject’s inspirations and motivations.We are seeking individual donations of any amount to make this film possible. Our initial goal is $12,000 for the critical seed funding needed to launch its production. Checks, with the memo note "Kelso Film," can be sent to Jamestown Rediscovery, Historic Jamestowne, 1365 Colonial Pkwy., Jamestown, VA 23081. These donations will enable an initial shoot between Director Schierholt and Dr. Kelso. All donors will receive film credit for helping to support the production. Please go the film’s website for more details. During this first shoot (3-5 days) Schierholt and Kelso will initiate the on-camera conversations to form the core of the film. Additionally, Schierholt will shoot atmospheric location footage of Kelso at the dig and other venues for visual context.

After the initial shoot, Schierholt will edit and prepare a short teaser film (3-5 minutes) to be used to promote the upcoming film and help secure the additional completion funds and for its promotion, distribution and exhibition.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

First California Company, Jamestowne Society has revised its website’s About Jamestown page with new content: Jamestown's Place in Our Nation's History.

Jamestown was Virginia’s colonial capital for almost nine decades. What the Society's ancestors accomplished over that time is as important as who they were and when they came.

What they did is why Jamestown has a deeper and more profound meaning than being just one among our national origins; the best evidence is their contributions towards our own nation building. This page chronicles and summarizes those contributions and explains why they are in the shadows of our history.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

You now have a unique opportunity to voice your concern to the US Army Corps of Engineers about Dominion Power's ill-planned proposal to build 300' tall transmission line towers across the James River and desecrate views of our Founding River from several historic and important sites.

The Army Corp of Engineers Wants You!
Comments Due by June 20, 2015

Late last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk District, USACE published a notice on its web site seeking public input on Dominion Virginia Power's plan to build the Surry-Skiffes Creek project, 17, high-voltage, transmission towers across the James River from Hog Island to just east of Carter's Grove Plantation.

The Corps of Engineers is seeking comments to assist in their evaluation of the impact of the project on historic properties and evaluation of alternatives, which could avoid, minimize or mitigate the adverse effects of this project. The comment period ends on June 20, 2015.

Public meetings hosted by the Corps of Engineers should follow this comment period.

Please let your voice be heard. Write to the Army -- before June 20!

It is very important that USACE and Dominion be convinced that there is national interest in this. Dominion is using scare tactics, e.g., threatening brownouts, etc. to avoid very feasible alternatives to the transmission towers. However, we are advised that those threats would be unlikely as it is obliged to offer service despite probably getting fined for air quality regulatory non-compliance at the coal-fired generators it must replace.

The James River is worth protecting. Here are some compelling reasons for joining us in submitting YOUR comments.

Monday, February 23, 2015

We will give
the 3rd in our series of lectures on Comparing Our 17th Century American Origins; Our Own Lessons in Nation
Building, which focus on relevant legacies from the first seven decades that contributed to our nation building. These lectures stem from our interest in the lives of our own ancestors in early colonial times.

We are covering basic elements of
our unique American culture and society that have evolved over 400+ years from their
beginnings in Virginia, Massachusetts and New York, and offer a comparative
overview of our origins from one of those 17th century colonies.Proceeding from our
previous two lectures on Jamestown, we are exploring the events, developments and
interrelationships among the three colonies during their earliest and most
formative years, and what they contributed to the building of our nation.

In this program, we will discuss the four decades' history and legacies of New Netherland and New Amsterdam (which became New York). Some of what we will cover will include the links of Dutch settlers with the Pilgrims, Dutch culture and society in the New World, the settling and development of Manhattan,
Dutch historical religious tolerance, civil liberties, role of women,
and a historically classless society.

This lecture will be one of the Peer Presenters
series at the Osher Life Long Learning Institute at the University of
California, San Diego at 10 AM on Tuesday, April 21, 2015.

Prior lectures in this series have included:

An
Ancestor Comes to Jamestown (May 21, 2013):Jamestown was the
first permanent English settlement in the New World and one of our American
origins. We review the events, crises and accomplishments during its founding seventeen years. Archaeology is presenting us with new insights into the colony. Its
attraction for our ancestors, among the earliest families to settle,
was economic opportunity. Richard and Isabella Pace exemplified middle class
English entrepreneurial immigrants who were the backbone of Jamestown’s
establishment and its contribution to the building of our nation.

Pocahontas
and Jamestown’s Legacies (May 20, 2014): 2014 was the 400th
wedding anniversary of Pocahontas and John Rolfe (yes…not John Smith), which
triggered lasting effects for the building of our nation and what we have
become. She was an important historical figure in our nation’s early history;
much more than the mythological caricature she has become. She and Rolfe also had
long-lasting impacts on Jamestown’s development and, ultimately, its survival.
We cover her role and effect as a young, short-lived woman on Jamestown’s
viability and the following five decades after her life as the Paces moved up the James River.

About Jimson Harvest

"Jimson" was an old, perhaps the original, nickname for Jamestown. It’s long been obsolete and only retained in the name of the hallucinogen whose effects were first noted from the antics of soldiers who unwittingly ingested it at the colony late in the 17th century. "Harvest" refers to our gathering and publication of items with Jamestown significance that we find in our research, serendipitously come across or otherwise come to us.

In addition to what we author, we'll post a wide variety of what we harvest, ranging from articles and book reviews to reports on current events that are focused on Jamestown and relevant early American colonial history.